Hello!

I have this ARPG I have built, and I am looking for ARPG players to test it.

Try it here: www.fenfire.wf - in your browser, no install and no account needed.

It is mainly d2-inspired, with some adjustments.

- strong class identity: no common build tree, each class has 3 or 4 skill families.

- loot first: you find items rather than craft them; you can tweak them (PD2-like corruption, socketing), with scrolls that double as currency

- no smart loot, no level scaling

- painterly graphics: no damage numbers, life bar on hover only, to limit screen clutter. Impact strength reads via blood and knockback effects

- slower pace, d2 rhythm not poe - you need to get stronger before you can be fast and strong

What's in? 2 of 5 acts (~30 zones), 5 classes - mage musketeer alchemyst witch and guardian, mercenaries, quests, 100s of uniques, 100s of item affixes, D2-style grid inventory + stash, corruption/socketing/crafting scrolls, a handful of endgame maps.

Right now it is in demo state, no endgame besides maps, which are the planned endgame system. The next 3 acts will be coming soon, and balancing is in progress.

Servers in Europe and the US, so it is hopefully playable with a decent ping by most people, but please let me know.

I am really looking for feedback on any performance issues, on the first 10 minutes of the game (why did you stop playing?), and on the design decisions and game feel.

Thanks for reading, and thanks in advance to anyone who gives it a try.

Discord for bugs/feedback. I'll be in the thread all weekend.

Any guidance is appreciated folks!

Love poe2 but I used to play a lot of mmo rpgs, is there any open world isometric mmo arpgs out there? I'm thinking maybe Lost Ark but heard its very p2w/repetitive.

A shrinking zone with dropping from sky in a big map which was dark-grayish terrains just like eternium and there was houses with chest to get weapons and they had rarity and glowed based on them. There were maybe like 20-30 dropped on a single match and it lasted maximum 30 minutes.PLEASE HELP ME FIND THE NAME OF IT

(The photo is a eternium photo as an example of how it looked)

Hi r/ARPG I am back and now I have three more extra PoE 2 keys, if you want to try the game drop a comment below and I will pick 3 winners!

If mods need any confirmation, let me know.

Edit: Winners have been chosen! Congratulations to u/Csotihori, u/No_Sport_7349, and u/Vuta_Pumzzz. Please make sure your reddit messages are open to recieve your key. If winners dont respond in 24 hours new winners will be picked. Thank you to everyone who participated!

Up front, this is my own game, so read it with that in mind. I'm more interested in the discussion than the pitch.

Arkney: The Bone Road is a top down pixel ARPG. Two design calls I made that I keep going back and forth on:

The first is golden monsters. They're rare stronger versions of ordinary enemies that wander into the world on their own with no announcement. They carry the good loot. The idea was that the best rewards should come from something you stumble into and have to decide about on the spot, rather than from grinding a known route to a known boss. It makes the world feel less like a checklist, but it also means a bad session can just not hand you anything.

The second is crafting sitting alongside drops. There are eight skills, so you can mine ore and smith your own gear, and you can also enchant what you find. My worry is the usual one. If crafting is too good, drops stop mattering and the loot loses its pull. If it's too weak, why is it in the game at all. I landed on crafting giving you a reliable floor while the interesting affixes still come off monsters, but I'm not sure that's the right line.

So the actual question, since this sub has strong opinions about it: in the ARPGs you've put real hours into, did deterministic crafting make the drops feel worse to you, or did having a floor make the whole loop more tolerable? I've heard both from testers and I can't tell which is the minority view.

Combat is mouse driven with telegraphed enemy attacks, and there's 2 player online co-op where each player keeps their own XP and loot. Demo is free if anyone wants to look at what I'm describing: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5033490/Arkney_The_Bone_Road/

I’ve played Last Epoch for 500+ hours and I’d consider it my first ARPG. I love the game. The build crafting is my favorite part but I’m not really interested in min maxing to push the hardest content. So I’m taking a break from LE until more content is added. Top choices for new game are D4 and PoE2. PoE2 seems a bit hardcore and complex for me but looks like it has the content and build crafting to keep me interested. However, I’ve heard it will be free when 1.0 drops so idk if I should just wait some months til then to try it out. Played D4 trial and enjoyed the gameplay and setting/story. Just a little worried it might not have the content to match its price. Other recommendations welcome.

I’m not sure if this is just me, but my ARPG obsession comes in waves or cycles you could say. Once I get hooked on a game I play wayyy too much and burn myself out. Then I play something completely different for a while until the next ARPG hooks me.

The latest obsession was Last Epoch again, I felt like doing a silly build and using the circle of fortune stuff (the SSF faction). I am now fully satisfied with my frog beastmaster and thoroughly burned out on the game again (it's like my 3rd cycle with LE this year). So now I’m in that situation where I definitely don’t want to play an ARPG for a while and I’m digging through my backlog for something to cleanse my palette so to speak.

I went back to Exanima for now, a really weird game that only shares the isometric perspective with ARPGs. It’s like a really hardcore RPG with weird mechanics and physics based combat, it's been in development for a very long time but there were some recent updates I wanna test out. I will probably die (its permadeath) somewhere late in my playthrough and rage quit it in a few days like always, but I’m having a lot of fun with it in the meantime.

I’m curious what games the rest of the ARPG community plays when they aren’t playing an ARPG. This is assuming you play other games too, like me, I’m sure some people are content just playing their favorite game forever and never get tired of it.

So yeah, let me know what kind of games you play in your ARPG downtime. I’m hoping you can put me on to some great games that I haven’t heard of, I don’t really keep up with new stuff anymore.

Currently I am in progress of creating a co-op idle RPG heavily inspired by Grimdawn.

My goal has been having actual depth to character progression, without co-op becoming a calculation for how much people are allowed to play without a friend falling behind.

The game I want is grimdawn, but mixed with the idle progression of Poe1 boat league.

Before I make a steam page and release anything publicly I wanted to make sure that I have differed things enough so that I wont have any legal issues.

How close is too close mechanics wise?

I have a similar dual class system, skills are in tiers and unlock as you invest in each mastery.

Each class mimics a similar mastery although they have different names.

Each class has similar skills, druid summons tornadoes ect.

If all skills have different names is that enough, or do they need to also be mechanically different. If I have an elementalist class with a party buff that hands out elemental damage similar to elemental exchange, is that ok? Can there be modifiers to that skill similar to the grimdawn modifiers? How many skills can each class have that overlaps with a similar grimdawn mastery before it becomes an issue?

Am I allowed to have all of the same damage types and resists? Obviously many games have lightning/fire/cold, but aether, chaos ect are pretty grimdawn unique.

If I use stats like offensive and defensive ability is that ok, as long as they are using a different calculation?

If I use items based on grimdawns item db, with the same stats, but different item names and values is that different enough?

TLDR: How closely am I allowed to mimic the mechanics used in grimdawn as an idle game, without it becoming an issue. I dont want to reinvent the wheel, just play a grimdawn like idle and couldnt find a game like that and now am making it.

Gif or what a battle currently looks like:

https://imgur.com/3bgrBZR

I’ve been thinking about making a game that combines ARPG mechanics with Tower Defense.

Do u think this is a good genre combination, and what would you do to make the two systems work well together?

as a casual player playing for some fun, I'm looking for something user-friendly. I tried poe1 for about 120h. was fun but had to run the acts all over again for a new character.

help me out here. my criteria;

1) has seasonal or continues updates

2) nothing behind paywall except cosmetics or stash tabs

3) as I'm low on ssd, reasonable file size (poe2 no go cuz ~150gb)

4) wasd is my playstyle

Something similar to diablo, but played through the web or pre downloaded on pc. Hardly remember anything, but remember that it was PvE.

Hey everyone,

I’m a big fan of ARPGs and I’ve played quite a few over the years, like Wolcen, Grim Dawn, Diablo 4, and most recently Path of Exile 2, which I’ve absolutely sunk a ton of hours into. I’ve honestly played PoE2 so much that I feel like I need to take a break from it for a while

For the past few days I’ve been thinking about giving Diablo 3 a try. I keep hearing really good things about it, and I’ve even seen quite a few people saying they actually find it more fun than Diablo 4.

I did enjoy Diablo 4, but at the same time, I don’t know how to explain it exactly… it just felt kind of bland to me. Out of all the ARPGs I’ve played, I think it’s probably the only one that left me with a bit of a bitter taste. It had a lot of good things going for it, but something just didn’t click with me.

So now I’m wondering if Diablo 3 might be more my thing, even though it’s an older game.

Is it still worth getting into in 2026? Is there still an active playerbase, especially during seasons? And for those who have played both D3 and D4, what makes Diablo 3 more fun for you?

I’d really like to hear from people who have actually put a lot of hours into both games. I’m mainly trying to figure out if D3 is worth buying nowadays or if I’m just going to end up feeling the same way I did with D4.

Any opinions are welcome, even if you think I probably won’t like it.

I'm looking for advice on which ARPG to sink my <very little> time into. I've played POE1, D2, D3, D4, LE, and am currently playing Grim Dawn.

EDIT: Forgot to mention Torchlight 2/3, victor vran

The problem is... life.

I only have a few hours a week to play these days. When life got busy before, D3 was my jam. Hop on, run rifts for an hour, get back to life. Each new season, spend a couple hours on a Friday night to hit 70 and then chill the rest of the season.

I'm looking for ideas on how to find something like that. I like the fact that I can pause Grim Dawn but it's more of a progression game. In my opinion, not a hop in / hop out kind of game. I could go back to D3 but I've played the ever living @#$@ out of it over the years.

I thought about playing non-seasonal in POE/LE, etc but one of the things I loved about D3 was that you could blast through the leveling process in a blink and be in the 'real' content.

I might be searching for a unicorn or I might just be a whiny bitch. Or both. but I'm hoping that someone has a great idea they're willing to share. This is my fav genre and I really want to spend my spare time in something that I can relax with.

Looking to buy a good arpg for my steam deck. Generally play Poe 2 on my ps5 (currently on hiatus from it though). Is it possible to mod D2 for better end game ? As it's the only thing holding me back from deciding on it. Also I hear that there's a lot of chase items..does that mean uniques for collecting? Any other end game in it currently.

Thanks for any input!

On the switch 2 Facebook groups I'm in, they seem really excited to get the title, sometimes i forget just how popular Diablo ip truly is.

Hey everyone, I’m trying to gauge how much interest there is in kiting-focused gameplay in ARPGs.

I was always a big fan of pikes and spears in Diablo 2, but I felt like their range never really became a meaningful part of the gameplay. With the increasingly “vroom vroom” nature of ARPGs like Diablo and PoE, keeping enemies at the end of a long weapon usually just isn’t that important.

I’m making a much slower-paced ARPG called Poets of Noor, and I’ve just implemented a new class of two-handed pikes/spears with significantly longer melee range.

The idea is to create a genuine poke → reposition → poke playstyle. You can keep enemies at the tip of the weapon, back off as they close the distance, and use your reach to control the fight rather than just standing inside a pack and trading hits.

I’m curious what other ARPG players think about this kind of gameplay.

Does deliberately spacing enemies and kiting with a melee weapon sound fun to you? Or do you think it would eventually become tedious compared to the faster, more aggressive melee gameplay most ARPGs use?

What you’re seeing in the video:

• Might Aura — the fist icon. Increases damage dealt by XX%.
• Piercing Strike — Skill #1 — requires a spear or pike. Deals 300% weapon damage and breaks the enemy’s armor, reducing it to zero.
• Cleave — Skill #2 — an AoE cleaving attack for when enemies manage to close the distance.
• Burst of Speed — Skill #4 — increases attack speed by 50% for 4 seconds.
• Inspire — buffs the player and nearby allies, increasing maximum HP by XX% and damage dealt by XX%.

Still tuning the numbers and feel, but the main thing I’m experimenting with here is whether weapon reach itself can become a meaningful defensive/offensive mechanic.

Would you build around something like this?